Nong Kanchana

📍 Chiang Mai, Thailand

🗣 Thai, English

I grew up in a village 28km outside Chiang Mai, where my mother cooked over a clay pot and we grew most of what we ate. I moved to the city 15 years ago but I still cook Northern Thai — not the pad thai and green curry that tourists order, but the food that people in Chiang Mai actually make at home: khao soi with its proper fermented mustard greens, sai oua sausage pounded with lemongrass and kaffir lime, nam prik noom green chilli dip that goes on everything. I take people into Warorot Market at dawn and feed them in my kitchen. This food barely exists in restaurants, even here.